He hurried on, his words stumbling over each other.

‘Dick Willows—he was with me—and old Curdie—and George—and Platt and lots of the boys. I tell you I do not never go near Alice. Ach Gott, it is the truth I am telling you.’

His voice rose to a scream. The inspector nodded to his underling.

‘Take him away. Detained on suspicion.’

‘I don’t know what to think,’ he said as the unpleasant, shaking old man with the malevolent, mouthing jaw was removed. ‘If it wasn’t for the letter, I’d say he did it.’

‘What about the men he mentions?’

‘A bad crowd—not one of them would stick at perjury. I’ve no doubt he was with them the greater part of the evening. A lot depends on whether any one saw him near the shop between half-past five and six.’

Poirot shook his head thoughtfully.

‘You are sure nothing was taken from the shop?’

The inspector shrugged his shoulders.

‘That depends. A packet or two of cigarettes might have been taken—but you’d hardly commit murder for that.’

‘And there was nothing—how shall I put it—introduced into the shop? Nothing that was odd there—incongruous?’

‘There was a railway guide,’ said the inspector.

‘A railway guide?’

‘Yes. It was open and turned face downward on the counter. Looked as though someone had been looking up the trains from Andover. Either the old woman or a customer.’

‘Did she sell that type of thing?’

The inspector shook his head.

‘She sold penny time-tables. This was a big one—kind of thing only Smith’s or a big stationer would keep.’

A light came into Poirot’s eyes. He leant forward.

A light came into the inspector’s eye also.

‘A railway guide, you say. A Bradshaw—or an ABC?’

‘By the lord,’ he said. ‘It was an A B C.’

Chapter 5

Mary Drower

I think that I can date my interest in the case from that first mention of the A B C railway guide. Up till then I had not been able to raise much enthusiasm. This sordid murder of an old woman in a back-street shop was so like the usual type of crime reported in the newspapers that it failed to strike a significant note. In my own mind I had put down the anonymous letter with its mention of the 21st as a mere coincidence. Mrs Ascher, I felt reasonably sure, had been the victim of her drunken brute of a husband. But now the mention of the railway guide (so familiarly known by its abbreviation of A B C, listing as it did all railway stations in their alphabetical order) sent a quiver of excitement through me. Surely—surely this could not be a second coincidence?

The sordid crime took on a new aspect.

Who was the mysterious individual who had killed Mrs Ascher and left an A B C railway guide behind him?

When we left the police station our first visit was to the mortuary to see the body of the dead woman. A strange feeling came over me as I gazed down on that wrinkled old face with the scanty grey hair drawn back tightly from the temples. It looked so peaceful, so incredibly remote from violence.